Was Scarecrow originally part of Suicide Squad?

Here’s an interesting one for you. Of all the DC villains to appear in Suicide Squad, which high profile Bat-villain didn’t make the cut?

If you said Scarecrow, you’d be right!

It seems that Professor Jonathan Crane, aka the Scarecrow, was up for a part in Suicide Squad, but before the film went before cameras the part was cut.

How do we know this?

Well, concept artist Ed Natividad recently uploaded some Suicide Squad artwork on his website and amongst the imagery was an illustration of none other than the Scarecrow (see below).

In keeping with the look and feel of Suicide Squad, Scarecrow has quite a creepy appearance. To be more frank, we wouldn’t want to bump into Natividad’s version of the Bat-villain down a dark alley.

Image: Ed Natividad

This version of the Scarecrow is giving us farmer-style chic, with a hint of serial killer.

It could be the shirt, it could be the weapon, but either way, this version of the Scarecrow is all about the corn fields. Would this have fitted in with the look of Suicide Squad? Hmm… maybe not, but it sure as heck would have been cool to see him crop up somewhere in the movie.

What’s perhaps even more interesting to note is that artist Ed Natividad once worked as a concept artist on 1997’s Batman & Robin – the fourth Bat-flick in the ‘80s/’90s run of Batman movies.

Had there been a fifth Batman movie – and we know one was in the pipeline – the Scarecrow would have been the main villain.

Would Natividad’s creepy Scarecrow design have featured in the proposed Batman movie? Who knows, but we’d put money on the final design not looking quite so freaky. Joel Schumacher was set to direct the fifth Bat-flick and we can’t imagine him using a concept quite like this one.

Either way, the Scarecrow that you see in this image was almost part of Suicide Squad, so surely this highlights one key fact: he’s going to pop up in the DC Cinematic Universe sooner rather than later, right?

We’d bet money on it.

About the author: Alex Wiggan has written blog posts for Honcho-SFX blog since October 2014. He likes writing, eating pizza and watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Sometimes in that order.